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Description
Some attempts at early forerunners those beautiful elven heraldric devices Tolkien painted. There's a special magic, for anyone who's spent a lot of time in Middle-Earth, in looking at Tolkien's own artistic renderings of his fictional universe, which are often simple, abstract, and endearingly strange, and I find I'm drawn to trying to present them in a way that feels true to the images Tolkien made but would not look out of place in the rather more gothic and highly figurative picture of his world that the likes of Alan Lee, John Howe, Ted Nasmith and many others have given us.

I tried imagining what these "devices" with their set rules of construction (lozenge-shaped for males, circular for females, heavy emphasis on multilateral symmetry) might have started out as in the pre-human, starlit antiquity of the 'Elder Days.' The elves are new to the world that was created for them and experimenting with their hands and minds, gathering materials (and many hints) from mother nature. Weaving, twining, bending, making things; tools, clothing, song, art. Things of beauty, perhaps maps of the world, or the story of creation, perhaps the story and "fate" of a person. The male symbol here is larger, and proclamatory in character; a banner to rally around during the migration West, or to hang in "halls" of living trees. Its energy emanates outward from a central cross of wooden staves strung with hair, representing Eru and the burst of Creation, the circles of the world and the stars of Varda. The feminine device is smaller, something hung over sleeping children, or worn as a trinket, its form maintained by pulling tension of the outer rim, tiny gems hung within, grown about with living flowers.

It was important to me that these feel primitive; the work of beings closer to our imagining of fairies on toadstools than the mighty Noldor in their shining mail. The elves are at this time in their stone age, but it's a stone age of natural artists, with an understanding of the world around them far exceeding mankind's, and eternal life with which to watch that world go through its motions.

Description
Some attempts at early forerunners those beautiful elven heraldric devices Tolkien painted. There's a special magic, for anyone who's spent a lot of time in Middle-Earth, in looking at Tolkien's own artistic renderings of his fictional universe, which are often simple, abstract, and endearingly strange, and I find I'm drawn to trying to present them in a way that feels true to the images Tolkien made but would not look out of place in the rather more gothic and highly figurative picture of his world that the likes of Alan Lee, John Howe, Ted Nasmith and many others have given us.

I tried imagining what these "devices" with their set rules of construction (lozenge-shaped for males, circular for females, heavy emphasis on multilateral symmetry) might have started out as in the pre-human, starlit antiquity of the 'Elder Days.' The elves are new to the world that was created for them and experimenting with their hands and minds, gathering materials (and many hints) from mother nature. Weaving, twining, bending, making things; tools, clothing, song, art. Things of beauty, perhaps maps of the world, or the story of creation, perhaps the story and "fate" of a person. The male symbol here is larger, and proclamatory in character; a banner to rally around during the migration West, or to hang in "halls" of living trees. Its energy emanates outward from a central cross of wooden staves strung with hair, representing Eru and the burst of Creation, the circles of the world and the stars of Varda. The feminine device is smaller, something hung over sleeping children, or worn as a trinket, its form maintained by pulling tension of the outer rim, tiny gems hung within, grown about with living flowers.

It was important to me that these feel primitive; the work of beings closer to our imagining of fairies on toadstools than the mighty Noldor in their shining mail. The elves are at this time in their stone age, but it's a stone age of natural artists, with an understanding of the world around them far exceeding mankind's, and eternal life with which to watch that world go through its motions.